


my heart was never pure

by orphan_account



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 20:11:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her emotions are dimmed and she's in perfect control of them. She feels her love for him in that place in her chest, but it's distant and unconnected. She isn't really feeling like she used to, but she knows it's there. He's has always been in that place in her chest. (She tries not to think of that place as her heart.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. spare me your judgements and spare my your dreams

**Author's Note:**

> AU after 4x21. I really don’t care about Silas so pretty much none of the bad-guy drama makes an appearance here. Damon/ Elena, with a lot of emphasis on Elena.

Just because Elena's turned her humanity back on doesn't mean she's back to reset settings. She's on what Damon calls a 'dimmer switch'. Emotions are there, they're just dimmed. But she learned a great deal about who she wants to be from having her humanity turned off. It's like she's seeing everything with fresh eyes. She sees the people around her for what they really are, and she made the decision that she would no longer live her life dictated by others’ terms.

She retains her respect of Rebekah, and decides to remain living in her house. She has renewed kindness towards Bonnie, and she spends an hour a day with Bonnie because she wants to, an hour she spends catching up and taking care of Bonnie and trying her best to be a good friend.

Despite Stefan's best efforts, she doesn't feel guilty about what she did while she was without her humanity.

Stefan and Caroline annoy her to no end. They follow her everywhere she goes, hovering. They don't allow her five minutes anywhere without showing up, and Elena had figured out Stefan had taken to stalking her from outside Rebekah's house while she's there. When she drives a town over to shop for clothes, alone, Caroline showed up after five minutes at the mall. Caroline frowns as Elena picks clothes closer to what Katherine would wear than what human Elena used to wear, but Elena has cast off that old version of her, and she wants to wear black and heels and leather jackets. She wants her outside to match her inside.

Even worse, Caroline and Stefan pester her about every decision she makes and every thought she thinks aloud with a litany of 'Are you sure?' and unsubtle comments attempting to correct what she thinks. If she drinks blood from a person, they lecture her on having compassion for humans (even though she never kills, and is actually fairly kind to the people she drinks from). When she expresses absolutely no care for graduation or anything resembling a human life, they lecture her about how important these things are to her. She initially argues and fights back with them. She gets so angry that they are trying to correct all her actions and thoughts until she matches them. She finally decides no longer cares what they think, so she begins to just ignores them. Ignores Stefan's daily insistence she move out of Rebekah's house and back into the boarding house, Caroline's insistence she care more about graduation and to feel everything in 100 percent color (they despise her dimmer switch), and she especially ignores all of their snide comments about Damon.

Damon's avoiding her. He knows she is still angry about his and Stefan's treatment of her while her switch was off. (Damon realized she was angry. Stefan has disregarded it, along with everything else she feels.) He avoids her and drinks. She lets him. She’s not responsible for other peoples’ actions anymore.

Tired of Stefan's constant judgement and Caroline's insistence she feel what Caroline wants her to feel, and just extremely tired, she packs her bags, writes Damon a note, and leaves.

She's intelligent, more intelligent than Stefan ever gave her credit for. She drives her own car long enough to get to a truck stop, compels a trucker headed to Chicago to take her along, and three days later she's found a nice little bed and breakfast on the outside of the city to stay in. She changes her name and compels the woman running the bed and breakfast not to recognize her from a photo, and to describe her to any who ask as tall and blonde.

She's just covering her bases.

She left her phone sitting next to the note she left for Damon, and she picked Chicago on a whim. She does not expect them to find her anytime soon.

She spends her days exploring museums and looking at old buildings and eventually she begins to intern at the art museum. She moves into a little cheap flat, and goes dancing at night at clubs, a different one a night. She spends her money on the flat and steals anything else she needs; the dimmer switch allows her to not care about things like petty theft. Any money she needs she compels off wealthy businessmen in the financial district. (She’s particularly proud of figuring out that idea.) She feeds off handsome men at nightclubs, and she never kills a single one.

She's learning to be herself on her own. She gets to know what she likes and likes to do without having to worry about anyone else. It's invigorating. 

After the internship, it's a temp job in an office building, and then interning in a publishing house. She merely does these to fill her days. She likes having something to do, something to give her a purpose, even if it’s small.

After this is done, she packs her clothes into two suitcases and flies to Europe.

She fills her days exploring every old building and castle in Europe. She likes sleeping in hostels and hopping trains and exploring. She takes thousands of pictures and logs them on a flash drive; her only souvenirs. She hates the idea of being a packrat, partly because she has no place to put things, and partly because it reminds her too much of Stefan.

She considers sending Damon a postcard, but she decides she would rather let him come after her. She doesn’t care too much if he finds her or not.

He shows up eventually. She’s spending the day in a beautiful old Spanish church, and she senses being watched, first, and then she smells him, that scent of bourbon and aftershave and something else, something distinctly Damon. She doesn’t really question how he found her. She doesn’t care that much.

She turns slightly and takes a photo of the stain glass window; she can see him just out of the corner of her eye.

She decided when she left that her life would be in her control and only hers. She sees him and realizes she wants him, so she walks up to him and kisses him. He kisses her back, lovingly and lustfully. She kisses him like he’s no one special.

She walks from the church, knowing he’ll follow her. They say nothing the entire walk back to her cottage, but the minute she closes the front door behind him, they’re kissing again.

He has her up against the wall in the hallway, both of them only half undressed. She didn't give him time to take her bra or his jeans off.

"Elena." he whispers against her neck. She senses he wants to say more, so she pulls his face up and kisses him, hard.

He kisses every inch of her skin and touches her gently and lovingly; she grips him hard enough to bruise and doesn't return a single one of his kisses. Her emotions are dimmed and she's in perfect control of them. She feels her love for him in that place in her chest, but it's distant and unconnected. She isn't really feeling like she used to, but she knows it's there. He's has always been in that place in her chest. (She tries not to think of that place as her heart.)

When she comes, she bites into his neck and drinks. He cries out in shock, but quickly bites his lip. He has already figured out she would rather he stayed quiet.

He comes crying her name and holding her to him. After, she slides down from his arms and pulls her jeans back on. He watches her, his face full of emotions. She barely spares a glance for him.

She says nothing to him, hasn't said more than two words since he showed up. She turns her back on him and goes into her kitchen.

She turns on her radio and keeps him firmly behind her. (She knows she's being dismissive and cold. That's what she wants. Anything less would be putting him in control, and she knows that is not a good idea.)

They're both shirtless and barefoot. She'd put her shirt back on but he tore it in his haste to get at her, and she doesn't bother to go upstairs and get another.

He leans against the counter and watches her. Once upon a time, when she was human, the scrutiny would bother her. Now the only thing that bothers her is his sentimentality. He watches her like the differences in her physically hurt him. He watches her like he loves her and like it hurts him to love her.

She cares very little about how he feels, but she knows if she isn’t careful, he’ll undo all her hard work of not caring. Too long with Damon, and she’ll lose control over her emotions.

She pulls out two blood bags and offers one to him without turning. He takes and starts drinking, but stops abruptly when she puts hers in a mug and then into the microwave.

"You're different." he says quietly.

She shrugs. "Yes." There's no emotion on her face or in her voice; he seems to be unable to decide which emotion he wants to settle on.

"Are you going to kick me out?" he questions. He sounds like he’s afraid she will.

Elena shrugs again. "Stay, go, doesn't matter to me."

"Elena." he breathes imploringly. Once upon a time, the way he said her name made her tremble. She would question how he could say it so lovingly and sweetly and so Damon-like. Now she hears the desperation in it. Look at me his voice says. Come back to the way you were before.

She takes her mug out of the microwave and finally turns to him. He looks distraught and unhappy.

With a bit of force, she repeats herself. "Stay if you want to stay. Go if you want to go."

"What do you want, Elena? Do you want me to stay?" She realizes he's being delicate with her, and that makes her angry. Stefan was delicate with her.

"I don't care what you do.”

“Yes.” He says sadly. “I know.”


	2. you were cold as the blood through your bones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She can't really feel her own emotions, but his are crawling over her skin.

He doesn't hover over her like Stefan did. When she goes out, he goes with her, and when she stays home, he stays too. He is just there, with her without expecting anything of her. The fact that he demands nothing of her is the reason she hasn't made him leave.

Having him around starts to feel natural to her. He sleeps in her guest bedroom, cooks food, does laundry, doesn't question it when she says they're going into the city to eat or dance or feed. He doesn't question it when she comes into his room at night. He's content with doing whatever she wants to do. 

He doesn't question it when she feeds in front of him. She doesn't care if he stays or not, or if he stares.

He never feeds in front of her. She doesn't even know if he drinks from people or bloodbags. 

When they're out dancing and she makes him feed on some random person with her, she knows that he will do whatever she asks of him.

They return home with bloodstained mouths and fuck in her bed. She does not question why she wants to be in her own bed.

She knows, after, that he will allow her to take him apart piece by piece if she wants. He'll let her ignore him and fuck him and bite him and break him if that's what she wants to do. She is as sure of this as she is sure he will stay here with her until she leaves him or kicks him out.

She can't really feel her own emotions, but his are crawling over her skin.

Lying in bed together would be intimate under different circumstances, but she sees through him, to the very core of him, and it makes her almost want to be sick. 

"Are you angry?" she asks curiously. She sees anger in his face, pain and anger and sadness and loathing. She wants to know what he's feeling.

She especially wants to make sure he doesn't ruin her control with all the feelings he's brought with him into her bed.

"Oh, do you care now?" he snarks. The Damon who cracked jokes and hid his pain and made her laugh is gone. This Damon is Damon without pretense. He doesn't bother to hide his feelings, instead he wears them on display. She partly thinks this is done to get her to feel, to force her to take notice of them. And partly she thinks he is doing it because he no longer has an audience for which he needs to perform for. He only has her, and there is no need for him to pretend for this Elena, this version of her without obligations to care about anything at all.

"Not as much as I'm sure you do." 

He lets out a pained sigh, and reaches for her, but she pulls away from him. She knows he means to hold her gently, lovingly, but that's crossing a line. She may fuck him in her bed, but she won’t let him hold her.

“I’m not angry.” he says softly. “Not at you, not really."

“But you are angry.” she presses. She wants to know, wants to hear him explain it. She wants to keep her control.

“Jesus, Elena, what do you want me to say? You want me to talk about my feelings?” he asks her. She can tell he's frustrated, but she doesn't quite know what about. 

So she he just looks at him passively. Everything she does is passive, even breaking him into little pieces.

She waits, for him to leave or answer her questions, questions she knows he really does not want to answer.

"I miss you." he finally says. He says this like it explains everything, but it doesn't mean anything to her. 

"I haven't gone-" she starts to say, but he cuts her off. 

"You know what I mean. I know you know. You're holding on so tightly so you don't feel or care."

"You're wrong." She says simply. "You and Stefan forced emotions back on me, and they're still there. I just don't have to feel them if I choose not to. They're separate from me."

"How is that different from turning your switch off?" 

"It just is. It's different." She's not sure how to explain it to him, so she doesn't try.

He's quiet for a long time.

"Do you have some kind of plan, Elena? Some goal? Or are you just doing things on a whim?"

She shrugs at him. She doesn't have to explain anything to him if she doesn't want to.

"Mostly I do things when I want to. I don't think too far ahead or worry about things I've already done."

"Where does that leave me?" he asks. He asks it softly, without expectations, but she knows what he's hoping for. He wants her to declare she wants him to stay with her and see the world with her. 

She merely shrugs again. She does that a lot. "Do whatever you want, Damon. It's more of a choice either of you gave me."

She says this very deliberately. If she wanted to, she could be angry with him, cruel and harsh and angry.

It's easier to feel nothing, so she chooses that instead.

 

She fancies herself an icicle. Damon asked her how it is different from being switched off, but she couldn't really explain it to him. She can tell the emotions are there, anger or longing or grief or love. She simply chooses to be removed from them. 

When her switch was off, it was as if her emotions were locked away in a box in her chest. Now, it's as if the box is open, but she is still seperated from emotions. All she needs to do is reach for one and wrap herself in it, like a warm blanket, to truly feel that emotion, or she can ignore them and be empty.

She rarely reaches for them. She is content with being passive, content with just being without worrying about how things make her feel. Before, she was forcibly holding the box closed, and now she simply doesn't care enough to feel anything too strongly.

But she fears that Damon will change that, just by taking up the small space he takes up in her new life. She begins to find herself feeling a little, only a little. Anger or amusement or grief threaten to choke her, and she begins to have to actively not feel them. 

She finds herself thinking about him with something more than passivity. (She won't admit she loves him. Even if she does, she doesn't feel it.)

He is cracking her contentment. He's not forcing her to feel, he's making her want to. And she's not sure which is worse.

So she does the only thing she can think of to protect herself: she leaves.

She runs, escapes in the night while he sleeps, gets on a train to the closest city with an airport, picks a destination far away enough, and runs.

New Zealand is beautiful and sunny and devoid of any Salvatores.

She tells herself that feeling is not longing, not her missing Damon. But still, her new house on the beach feels like it's missing something. 

She feels like she's missing something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sort of figuring the direction of the story as I go, so please, bear with me. It'll be worth it, at least I hope it will.
> 
> Work title from Sigh No More by Mumford and Sons. Chapter title from Below My Feet by Mumford and Sons

**Author's Note:**

> Work title is from Sigh No More by Mumford and Sons. Chapter title from Thistle and Weeds by Mumford and Sons


End file.
